Same thing happened to me when I started asking questions about an ex-employer's security policies. Basically, we were developing custom in-house software to assist in software deployment. Or rather, I was -- and saving the company thousands. Our workload was horrible, it was a lot of repetition, and automation made tremendous sense compared to the labor expenditures that would have been necessary. So I wrote the software, tested it, and deployed it into production. Then a new security policy came out that we weren't allowed to use pen drives or "unauthorized" software. So I wrote them back after reviewing their policy and told them their policies were overly vague, offered no technical guidance, and there was no contact information provided anywhere in the organization for my team to liason with to assure us we were in compliance. I was fired four days later, over the objections of my entire department and the senior staff of contractor procurement -- who never got any input on the decision.
Of course, I'd still have the job if I could have just been satisfied with perezhilton.com, and letting their infrastructure go to crap and their costs through the roof.
Umm, nobody said we'd be turning voting over to the great unwashed masses. Or for that matter, requiring every state to have a say on it. What I was suggesting was that the states merely have to ratify by majority vote any treaty with another country. And the only reason this is necessitated is because the federal government has expanded its powers to the point now where the entire union can be entered into a contract (treaty) with another country--where the member states provide the resources negotiated for said treaty, without any say or even knowledge of, the content of such a treaty. While in this case it could be merely copyright, what if it was a mutual defense pact with, say, Taiwan? China attacks Taiwan and suddenly we're at DEFCON 1 and calling up the national guard and reinstituting the draft -- based on a treaty the public knew nothing about. The magnitude is different, but the legal mechanics are unchanged.
This is clearly an abuse of power. Over three hundred million people deserve more government representation than that. This seems to be the only solution that guarantees it, as the federal government has become so obsessed with national security it's willing to sell out state security interests in the misguided notion that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's damned lunacy and the states should be talking about secession, especially with crap like this where the federal government has abjectly failed in its primary mission: The safety and security of the 50 states. Nowhere in the Constitution does it suggest that the states serve the interests of the federal government -- quite the reverse! If they're trying to reverse that power dynamic, they're going to tear the Union apart, and rightfully so.
Damn, I just flipped back from perezhilton and didn't even notice the difference. What are a bunch of geeks and nerds doing discussing bags and fashion accessories? ^_^ Oh yes, I know, laptop bags are important, protecting the baby and all that. Still, I think it's a slow news day here.
It would take a rank ideologue to assume that making legislation neutral to sex and race would be a pragmatic approach to addressing institutionalized imbalances in equity and social justice.
Institutionalized; That word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The government is an institution and by definition passing an amendment banning discrimination would be a pragmatic approach to eliminating institutionalized imbalances. Perhaps you meant to say it wouldn't eliminate it entirely? If so, you're quite right, but it's a step in the right direction.
But the most recent time I can think of was the Civil War, which certainly wasn't recent.
There was a grassroots effort in the 80s to pass what was called the Equal Opportunity Amendment. It was approved by somewhat more than 20 states before being killed by the National Organization of Women, who were outraged that the special rights of women would be stripped away in favor of the equal rights of all. The amendment, essentially, made legal distinctions between men and women illegal. A side-effect not noted at the time but since undoubtedly got noticed: If men and women cannot be legally distinguished from one another, all marriages are "civil unions". It's funny how in this country, special rights have become more important than equal rights. Every minority must now have their own special power, rather than everyone having equal power. -_- Our founding fathers would cry if they were alive today to see how far we've fallen from the path of justice and equality.
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. -- Henry Ford
National security has become a thing used to protect illusionary profits, rather than real people. The solution is obvious: If our government is making treaties without the consent of the governed, then we should convene congress in our respective states and vote to remove from the constitution the power of the Federal Congress to make treaties without the consent and approval of the state legislatures. Of course, with as soft as the population has gotten lately and so indifferent to the affairs of its government, such a call to action is all but futile...
Yeah, but what sort of time scale are we talking about? Even current batteries discharge themselves over time.
Batteries can't discharge very quickly because chemical reactions take time to release their stored energy. If it's not a chemical reaction, then it's likely that the release of energy can happen very quickly, if not close to instantly -- like a capacitor. And while a capacitor can store a charge for several days, batteries can store their charge for several years.
Because you're implying that these researchers are in some other house that doesn't obey the laws of physics, and that pointing this out is some revelation. Physicists from three institutions in two countries worked on this - are you really so stupid to think they don't know about thermodynamics? Really?
There has been a lot of crap science put forward over the years -- that debacle with cold fusion being foremost in my mind. But research has been faked in every scientific field and in some cases hasn't been revealed for decades. Very smart people can make very elaborate ruses. I may not be a group of physicists from three institutions and in two countries, but I'm not an idiot either and I resent your implication that simply because I use an internet meme that cancels my original question. And of all the fields of science that have had faked research -- an awful lot of it has been over magnetism. Perpetual motion machines, in particular -- their inventors love using magnetism. So my skepticism is quite justified.
You still haven't addressed the point of my post: Which is how does a device that stores an electrical charge (a battery) via magnetism not go dead based simply on inductive coupling with nearby metals?
Everyone who is a civilian seems to have this idea that the military essentially crushes the individuality out of you,
If they want to change that perception, they should change their enlistment and hiring criterions to be reflective on ability rather than things like gender or sexual orientation. It's hard to take any organization that kicks people out based solely on those attributes. Because that's exactly what "crushing the individuality out of [someone]" is. when people are afraid to be themselves they're spending energy hiding instead of putting it towards working, thus further reinforcing the attitude they are less valuable and thus justifying the attitude that the original assessment was valid.
It is a wonderfully working system with little need to change, the real change is required of those entering it and realizing that their technical knowledge does not impart superiority over those who out rank them.
No, it doesn't. But their technical knowledge won't be communicated to a person of higher rank who doesn't keep the door open to constructive criticism and ideas. The same problems that plague corporate america and any large bureauacracy plague the military: And that is that the people who are on the front-lines, working the problem, don't have an open line of communication along the chain of command. Decisions flow from top to bottom, but information flows from bottom to top -- and that flow of information is easily and readily obstructed simply because it's human nature to not reveal when things are going badly, or that the plan that came down isn't workable, etc. It's like the telephone game, only instead of passing the message once, it has to be passed on twice -- once up, once down. Is it any surprise that there are major faults?
It was the other civilians that would give you a hard time. The military members were all very hard-working and saw that I am too. They repected my expertise and knew about how to be tolerant of my lifestyle even better than civilians (who hated my lifestyle).
For what it's worth, you have my support at least. My brother just got back from Iraq after serving in the Air Force. I don't agree with his choice of profession, but then I don't agree with a lot of people's. Don't mistake disagreement for a lack of support -- he's my brother and I'm the only one allowed to give him any crap for it.;) I also respect his expertise in his areas of study and experience. As to lifestyle, at least I have never had a problem with a soldier's lifestyle or how they lead their lives after coming home. Most are good for the community, and the ones that are bad -- well, there's always a few, it shouldn't detract from the whole. But if I might add one small point? Attitude. A lot of soldiers are very driven to succeed, and driven by financial interest or family-building, or a hobby, whatever -- they are very driven. And they make people who haven't been given that training feel inadequate. If there's any one source of friction between civilian and military life, this would be the stress-point. People in the military need to relax a little and let civilians find their own way (however stupid their life goals and methods seem) and in the same vein, civilians need to be less judgmental about the men and women who come back with a fire under their asses to be more.
Let me start with a personal disclosure: This past summer slashdot ran an article about interviewing the Air Force's cyber defense team. We submitted the answers, they submitted the replies, and most people were frustrated at the lack of transparency. But one thing they did say is that they were actively recruiting (one of the big reasons they accepted the interview request). Well, I decided to try and contact them using their website. I e-mailed them and said I was game and got bounced to a government jobs website which happened to be broken and also had none of the jobs for the program listed. After a few more hours of fruitless searching, I gave up. What does it matter how they treat their nerds if the interested ones can't even land face time with someone who knows how to screen them?
Second, our culture is radically opposed to the military culture. And I'm not talking about dropping bombs and warfare stuff that so-called "liberals" go crazy over. We play violent video games to relax. And there's more people in our community that advocate gun ownership and self-defense than in the general population. In short, while it might not be popular geek culture to be pro-military, it's not a single-digit percentage of us by any means. The flip of this though is that many of us live alternative lifestyles and conventional military thinking is that we're a security risk. If it's not our sexuality, it's our hobbies (LARPing comes to mind as one example), and if not our hobbies, than our eccentric worldviews, morality, religious preferences, etc. The very things that make us valuable -- the ability to think critically, take the initiative, and not be weighed down by conventional thinking is exactly the thing the military (like so many bureauacracies, large corporations, and organizations around the world) seems to weed out.
Really, by the time anyone makes it through all those hoops -- are they really going to be a significant asset? Can the military honestly say it's retaining enough labor assets to combat what less-restrictive organizations (including criminal and terrorist organizations) will accept, and also what they're willing to pay? Seriously. They're organizing out there -- they are seriously organizing how they aquire networking and system resources, they're doing it in bulk, and those resources can be easily militarized. They're being traded amongst themselves already and while right now the targets have been primarily financial, it's only going to take a few geniuses out there to sit down at a table and put their combined skillset together and start attacking real infrastructure targets.
"Cyber defense" as it sits today is a total and complete joke. Even with chain of command decisions under five minutes from aquisition to execution, you people are still orders of magnitude too slow. And your entire strategy has been reactive in nature, because you lack the intelligence assets necessary to get on the other side of the curve and begin anticipating and analyzing potential threats before they materialize. Not only that, but the military has long been associated with the protection of physical assets and real people -- they are woefully inequipped to deal with intangible assets and virtual people. This is the new blitzkrieg and attacks can start and end faster than a single person's physical reaction times (on the order of a half second).
They not only aren't fighting the right war, they don't even have the basic sense to know how to adapt to it, or hire the people and trust them to take them in the direction they need to go. It doesn't matter how they treat their "nerds" -- they've already been hired away by private companies, organized criminals, terrorists, or simply left the field due to lack of legitimate employment. And all the while hundreds of billions in assets sit largely undefended, or defended only as well as a bunch of civilians with a hobby interest in security can do.
With no chemical reactions in play, does this mean people won't be forced to upgrade their phones simply because their battery is all but dead?
No. There are still five year old children about, and they like taking the batteries out of things, then losing them in the toilet, the cat, the microwave... Trust me, the lack of chemical reactions doesn't diminish the need for replacement parts. -_-
In THIS house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics. So you create a magnetic field, okay. Great. What's to prevent everything that's metallic in the area from moving around it, inducing current in it, and converting it into useless thermal energy? In other words -- what's preventing the battery from discharging? It might be good for a really high-capacity capacitor, but a battery? Batteries are long term.
Security is only a problem with nefarious things are intended.
Well, actually, security is about being able to trust the system to do what you want it to do. It doesn't really matter whether you lost the customer database because a hacker broke in and wiped out the server or two drives failed and the array went up in smoke from a security standpoint. This is why as security professionals we try to adhere to the principle of granting the minimal amount of access necessary to accomplish a given task; And by default not allowing access. It limits the number of possible failure points, only one of which might be J. Random Hacker.
First, windows is bad blah blah, viruses blah blah, linux and baby jesus save blah blah. Okay, now that we've eliminated 95% of the discussion ideas for this thread: user training is a freaking awesome idea! Seriously, how many of you have walked into jobs and been handed a strip of paper with your userid and password (set to 'password') and told to change it -- and that was the total extent of your training?
I couldn't help but think of drugs when I read the headline: Researchers sniffing lines of keystrokes, complaining about how thin the air has gotten since when they were young. By god, back then the electrons were so thick they had to use thick 8 gauge wiring to make anything work. Why, these days, the electrons have been used and re-used so much that we can use 24ga wiring for communications. Hey, are you gonna finish that line of qwertyuiop?
Okay, so a bunch of his underlings got arrested for a spot of corruption while he was either (a) ignorant or (b) had plausible deniability. I like this guy already. I think he's got a very good handle on what it takes to be a good IT manager. My only other question: Was the soda machine out of Mountain Dew? If so, we have a winner.
Nothing to see here, except a few people that do not understand technology and are now complaining that their expectations are not met.
You're right, there really is nothing to see here. Or rather, there's nothing left. As the article says, a large number of configuration files are opened and written to as KDE starts up. If KDE crashes and takes the OS with it (as it apparently does), those configuration files may be truncated or deleted entirely -- the commands to re-create and write them having never been sync'd to disk. As the startup of KDE takes longer than the write delay, it's entirely possible for this to seriously screw with the user.
The two problems are:
1. Bad application development. Don't delete and then re-create the same file. Use atomic operations that ensure that files you are reading/writing to/from will always be consistent. This can't be done by the Operating System, whatever the four color glossy told you.
2. Bad Operating System development. If an application kills the kernel, it's usually the kernel's fault (drivers and other code operating in priviledged space is obviously not the kernel's fault) -- and this appears to be a crash initiated from code running in user space. Bad kernel, no cookie for you.
I see you're taking after America and it's horrible system of taxation, Britain, along with the justifications for doing so. Have you considered applying for colony status with us? We're still accepting new member states. Granted, our 401k and stock options are crap right now, and there's no health coverage, but you'll make it all back with smugness, and on your first day you get a large bat and combat boots as well as a welcome gift./grinning, ducking, running
If you're the IT guy, you'd better know the basics of compiling.
Like hell. Why should I learn how to compile, or basic programming, to apply security patches and distribute new software? Or is that not IT in your book? Look, you're asking an entire industry that runs on an Operating System that doesn't need to learn a new skill just to make something work that if they hadn't bothered to switch would be working anyway. That might be fine for you and I who actually are enthusiasts and love new technology, but for the guy who just got his degree and wants to make some money at computers without dedicating his life to them, he's not going to bother looking up gcc command syntax. He won't even load Ubuntu on a LiveCD... Because 90% of the market is Microsoft, and that's what he was taught, and that's what he knows, and that's what he's going to ask Management to keep doing. And they will, if only because that's what everybody else is doing.
If it's bespoke software, it's only smart to ask for the source code. If it's niche proprietary, well, good luck getting it to run in any case ten years later. Windows really doesn't have that great a track record of maintaining proper legacy support, although you would make it seem to be the opposite.
If it's niche proprietary, it will still run ten years later if it's made on Windows, because it does have that great track record of maintaining legacy support. That's half the reason it's so damned slow, unstable, and we bitch about it all the time -- all that legacy code! That's what Vista tried to do away with and look at what a flop that was. Every attempt Microsoft has made to do away with the original win32 API, with crap that goes back to the Windows 3.1 days, is met with derision from businesses. Large ones especially (that buy those very spendy Enterprise licensing schemes with Uber-Oh-My-God-That's-Expensive 24/7/365 support contracts). You buy Microsoft and Intel and you will still find parts and have a working system ten, maybe twenty years from now. That's an industry fact -- the support might be awful, it might be out of date, but by god it will run.
No, but if you're responsible for the purchasing and upkeep of a fleet of vehicles for your business, you'd better get a model someone can repair. Using binary blobs is like welding your car's hood shut: experts can't fix the engine, and amateurs can't even change the oil. You should think about your alternatives carefully before you bet the barn on them.
Using binary blobs is what most computers run on. Despite their shortcomings, they protect the "imaginary property" of those selling it, and they don't need programming knowledge to use--That's huge. Giving the vast majority of computer users (hell, even the majority of IT people) source code is about as productive as arranging deck chairs on the titanic. Sure, if everybody knew how and that was industry practice, wouldn't be a problem. But it's not, and so it is. Also, closed source is profitable (however imaginary and artificial the methods for doing so are) -- Businesses like making money, and they don't mind paying through the nose to other businesses so they can do the same -- all those costs are passed down to you, the consumer... Who is faced with buying products from any other business -- that does the same thing, which means the price is similiar.
Linux may have a better model, but it's not the dominant one, and until people can't make a living knowing only Microsoft, there will be a lot of people that are quite content to drive a car with the "hood welded shut". I hate Microsoft for the same reasons as everyone else, but they're in business for a reason, and you're doing your professional development and your employer a disservice to not know what that reason is.
Win95 isn't supported as of 2001. So it's equivalent to old releases of Linux in that regard.
Linux support. te-he. I don't think that even existed in 2001.
Hardware support is complicated, valgrind doesn't work (which makes debugging C apps a bit of a pain), some things like LVM and RAID are much inferior to their current state, but other than that, it's a perfectly functional system,
My car's alternator only works when it's above freezing, can only make left turns, and has one flat tire. But other than that, it's perfectly functional.
Nothing stops you from using the latest version of firefox, vim and gcc on 2.2 if you so wish. Try to install IE7 on Win95 though.
Backwards compatibility is quite a bit different than "future-proofing", which is like unicorns, santa claus, and transparent changes. They don't exist in IT. And for the record, the latest versions of firefox, vim, and gcc are compiled under a new glibc that would break horribly on those older systems with regard to binary compatibility and you know it.
At least you can coax Linux to work in unplanned situations, but good luck on getting anything modern installed on a Win95 box. The installer will probably refuse to even try.
By coaxing you mean recompiling the kernel, tweaking six different config files, and pulling your hair out for days trying to understand documentation that references C header files. Which is exactly the level of knowledge we should expect from every single person who's going to need to service that machine. That's what amazes me about the linux crowd -- sure, you can figure out a way to do whatever kludge you want, eventually. But when you need it working right now, and you don't have a guy who was born with Donald Knuth's book in his left arm and a keyboard in his right, you're kinda screwed.
You clearly don't know what the heck you are babbling on about. You were on target with the mainframe, that is reliability over the long term.
Take any linux binary compiled 10 years ago and run it today on a shipping kernel. Oh wait... you can't. Do the same under Macintosh. Oh wait... can't.
You think going back to Windows 95 is long term?
No, I think it's retarded. But there are a lot of embedded systems that run things as old as freaking DOS... still in production, still no plans to upgrade. Pray tell, why do you think that is?
And nobody had enough sense to demand the source code...
Oh, they can demand. And any business is going to say "Yeah... Right. Give up the only leverage we have on your balls? ha ha." Only they'll be more tactful about it.
You base your business on stuff you can't repair, realize the problem and don't make fixing it a goal. Then someday when it does go foom they will be shocked! shocked! and probably be lining up at the nearest public teat looking for a bailout like the banks.
I can't repair my car. Doesn't mean I don't drive one.
Linux/Unix on the other hand.... Do you realize how old UNIX is?
Somehow I don't think binaries compiled under Solaris will run under Linux. Binaries compiled for the Alpha architecture won't run under x86... and so on, and so on. I'm talking about binary compatibility, and that's what Microsoft delivers, version to version, year by year. Even Vista, the horrible failure that it was, bloated and crusty... still backwards compatible back to windows 3.1. It's disgusting, frankly... But that's what the customers ask for, that's what they get. You try running anything from thirty years ago on a recently-released "unix/linux" anything. Oh yeah: No source code. Binaries only. -_- You can rail on about technology improvements, and how this operating system does xyzzy so much better, and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, the number one reason why Microsoft is in business is "Backwards compatibility". Your examples don't have it... Not out of the box, not without a helluva lot of work, and a lot of expertise that just doesn't exist in bulk anymore.
What are you? Another Microsoft marketing/misinformation drone? Or have you just been brainwashed?
No. I have a lot of industry experience in something other than zealotry. And most companies won't migrate away from Windows because there is something business-critical (or many somethings) that can't be easily replaced. It doesn't matter how good the alternatives are if it will cost them more money to switch than to keep it as-is. Technical merits don't matter. Pretty-shiny, doesn't matter. Hoo-ha features of goodness, don't matter. The only thing that matters is "We've used this for X years, and dammit, we're not changing." Because that's how businesses think. Not you and I, we're geeks, but we're not making decisions -- a bunch of old guys who have done it this way forever do... And so that's why Microsoft wins. Because Microsoft doesn't change quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait till we see the review for #006666 nail polish!
Teal-colored nail polish doesn't really work on anyone with a pale or mixed complexion. It's just too damned dark and clashes...
Oh sorry, were you joking?
Same thing happened to me when I started asking questions about an ex-employer's security policies. Basically, we were developing custom in-house software to assist in software deployment. Or rather, I was -- and saving the company thousands. Our workload was horrible, it was a lot of repetition, and automation made tremendous sense compared to the labor expenditures that would have been necessary. So I wrote the software, tested it, and deployed it into production. Then a new security policy came out that we weren't allowed to use pen drives or "unauthorized" software. So I wrote them back after reviewing their policy and told them their policies were overly vague, offered no technical guidance, and there was no contact information provided anywhere in the organization for my team to liason with to assure us we were in compliance. I was fired four days later, over the objections of my entire department and the senior staff of contractor procurement -- who never got any input on the decision.
Of course, I'd still have the job if I could have just been satisfied with perezhilton.com, and letting their infrastructure go to crap and their costs through the roof.
Umm, nobody said we'd be turning voting over to the great unwashed masses. Or for that matter, requiring every state to have a say on it. What I was suggesting was that the states merely have to ratify by majority vote any treaty with another country. And the only reason this is necessitated is because the federal government has expanded its powers to the point now where the entire union can be entered into a contract (treaty) with another country--where the member states provide the resources negotiated for said treaty, without any say or even knowledge of, the content of such a treaty. While in this case it could be merely copyright, what if it was a mutual defense pact with, say, Taiwan? China attacks Taiwan and suddenly we're at DEFCON 1 and calling up the national guard and reinstituting the draft -- based on a treaty the public knew nothing about. The magnitude is different, but the legal mechanics are unchanged.
This is clearly an abuse of power. Over three hundred million people deserve more government representation than that. This seems to be the only solution that guarantees it, as the federal government has become so obsessed with national security it's willing to sell out state security interests in the misguided notion that what's good for the goose is good for the gander. It's damned lunacy and the states should be talking about secession, especially with crap like this where the federal government has abjectly failed in its primary mission: The safety and security of the 50 states. Nowhere in the Constitution does it suggest that the states serve the interests of the federal government -- quite the reverse! If they're trying to reverse that power dynamic, they're going to tear the Union apart, and rightfully so.
Damn, I just flipped back from perezhilton and didn't even notice the difference. What are a bunch of geeks and nerds doing discussing bags and fashion accessories? ^_^ Oh yes, I know, laptop bags are important, protecting the baby and all that. Still, I think it's a slow news day here.
It would take a rank ideologue to assume that making legislation neutral to sex and race would be a pragmatic approach to addressing institutionalized imbalances in equity and social justice.
Institutionalized; That word, I do not think it means what you think it means. The government is an institution and by definition passing an amendment banning discrimination would be a pragmatic approach to eliminating institutionalized imbalances. Perhaps you meant to say it wouldn't eliminate it entirely? If so, you're quite right, but it's a step in the right direction.
But the most recent time I can think of was the Civil War, which certainly wasn't recent.
There was a grassroots effort in the 80s to pass what was called the Equal Opportunity Amendment. It was approved by somewhat more than 20 states before being killed by the National Organization of Women, who were outraged that the special rights of women would be stripped away in favor of the equal rights of all. The amendment, essentially, made legal distinctions between men and women illegal. A side-effect not noted at the time but since undoubtedly got noticed: If men and women cannot be legally distinguished from one another, all marriages are "civil unions". It's funny how in this country, special rights have become more important than equal rights. Every minority must now have their own special power, rather than everyone having equal power. -_- Our founding fathers would cry if they were alive today to see how far we've fallen from the path of justice and equality.
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability. -- Henry Ford
National security has become a thing used to protect illusionary profits, rather than real people. The solution is obvious: If our government is making treaties without the consent of the governed, then we should convene congress in our respective states and vote to remove from the constitution the power of the Federal Congress to make treaties without the consent and approval of the state legislatures. Of course, with as soft as the population has gotten lately and so indifferent to the affairs of its government, such a call to action is all but futile...
Yeah, but what sort of time scale are we talking about? Even current batteries discharge themselves over time.
Batteries can't discharge very quickly because chemical reactions take time to release their stored energy. If it's not a chemical reaction, then it's likely that the release of energy can happen very quickly, if not close to instantly -- like a capacitor. And while a capacitor can store a charge for several days, batteries can store their charge for several years.
Because you're implying that these researchers are in some other house that doesn't obey the laws of physics, and that pointing this out is some revelation. Physicists from three institutions in two countries worked on this - are you really so stupid to think they don't know about thermodynamics? Really?
There has been a lot of crap science put forward over the years -- that debacle with cold fusion being foremost in my mind. But research has been faked in every scientific field and in some cases hasn't been revealed for decades. Very smart people can make very elaborate ruses. I may not be a group of physicists from three institutions and in two countries, but I'm not an idiot either and I resent your implication that simply because I use an internet meme that cancels my original question. And of all the fields of science that have had faked research -- an awful lot of it has been over magnetism. Perpetual motion machines, in particular -- their inventors love using magnetism. So my skepticism is quite justified.
You still haven't addressed the point of my post: Which is how does a device that stores an electrical charge (a battery) via magnetism not go dead based simply on inductive coupling with nearby metals?
Everyone who is a civilian seems to have this idea that the military essentially crushes the individuality out of you,
If they want to change that perception, they should change their enlistment and hiring criterions to be reflective on ability rather than things like gender or sexual orientation. It's hard to take any organization that kicks people out based solely on those attributes. Because that's exactly what "crushing the individuality out of [someone]" is. when people are afraid to be themselves they're spending energy hiding instead of putting it towards working, thus further reinforcing the attitude they are less valuable and thus justifying the attitude that the original assessment was valid.
It is a wonderfully working system with little need to change, the real change is required of those entering it and realizing that their technical knowledge does not impart superiority over those who out rank them.
No, it doesn't. But their technical knowledge won't be communicated to a person of higher rank who doesn't keep the door open to constructive criticism and ideas. The same problems that plague corporate america and any large bureauacracy plague the military: And that is that the people who are on the front-lines, working the problem, don't have an open line of communication along the chain of command. Decisions flow from top to bottom, but information flows from bottom to top -- and that flow of information is easily and readily obstructed simply because it's human nature to not reveal when things are going badly, or that the plan that came down isn't workable, etc. It's like the telephone game, only instead of passing the message once, it has to be passed on twice -- once up, once down. Is it any surprise that there are major faults?
It was the other civilians that would give you a hard time. The military members were all very hard-working and saw that I am too. They repected my expertise and knew about how to be tolerant of my lifestyle even better than civilians (who hated my lifestyle).
For what it's worth, you have my support at least. My brother just got back from Iraq after serving in the Air Force. I don't agree with his choice of profession, but then I don't agree with a lot of people's. Don't mistake disagreement for a lack of support -- he's my brother and I'm the only one allowed to give him any crap for it. ;) I also respect his expertise in his areas of study and experience. As to lifestyle, at least I have never had a problem with a soldier's lifestyle or how they lead their lives after coming home. Most are good for the community, and the ones that are bad -- well, there's always a few, it shouldn't detract from the whole. But if I might add one small point? Attitude. A lot of soldiers are very driven to succeed, and driven by financial interest or family-building, or a hobby, whatever -- they are very driven. And they make people who haven't been given that training feel inadequate. If there's any one source of friction between civilian and military life, this would be the stress-point. People in the military need to relax a little and let civilians find their own way (however stupid their life goals and methods seem) and in the same vein, civilians need to be less judgmental about the men and women who come back with a fire under their asses to be more.
Let me start with a personal disclosure: This past summer slashdot ran an article about interviewing the Air Force's cyber defense team. We submitted the answers, they submitted the replies, and most people were frustrated at the lack of transparency. But one thing they did say is that they were actively recruiting (one of the big reasons they accepted the interview request). Well, I decided to try and contact them using their website. I e-mailed them and said I was game and got bounced to a government jobs website which happened to be broken and also had none of the jobs for the program listed. After a few more hours of fruitless searching, I gave up. What does it matter how they treat their nerds if the interested ones can't even land face time with someone who knows how to screen them?
Second, our culture is radically opposed to the military culture. And I'm not talking about dropping bombs and warfare stuff that so-called "liberals" go crazy over. We play violent video games to relax. And there's more people in our community that advocate gun ownership and self-defense than in the general population. In short, while it might not be popular geek culture to be pro-military, it's not a single-digit percentage of us by any means. The flip of this though is that many of us live alternative lifestyles and conventional military thinking is that we're a security risk. If it's not our sexuality, it's our hobbies (LARPing comes to mind as one example), and if not our hobbies, than our eccentric worldviews, morality, religious preferences, etc. The very things that make us valuable -- the ability to think critically, take the initiative, and not be weighed down by conventional thinking is exactly the thing the military (like so many bureauacracies, large corporations, and organizations around the world) seems to weed out.
Really, by the time anyone makes it through all those hoops -- are they really going to be a significant asset? Can the military honestly say it's retaining enough labor assets to combat what less-restrictive organizations (including criminal and terrorist organizations) will accept, and also what they're willing to pay? Seriously. They're organizing out there -- they are seriously organizing how they aquire networking and system resources, they're doing it in bulk, and those resources can be easily militarized. They're being traded amongst themselves already and while right now the targets have been primarily financial, it's only going to take a few geniuses out there to sit down at a table and put their combined skillset together and start attacking real infrastructure targets.
"Cyber defense" as it sits today is a total and complete joke. Even with chain of command decisions under five minutes from aquisition to execution, you people are still orders of magnitude too slow. And your entire strategy has been reactive in nature, because you lack the intelligence assets necessary to get on the other side of the curve and begin anticipating and analyzing potential threats before they materialize. Not only that, but the military has long been associated with the protection of physical assets and real people -- they are woefully inequipped to deal with intangible assets and virtual people. This is the new blitzkrieg and attacks can start and end faster than a single person's physical reaction times (on the order of a half second).
They not only aren't fighting the right war, they don't even have the basic sense to know how to adapt to it, or hire the people and trust them to take them in the direction they need to go. It doesn't matter how they treat their "nerds" -- they've already been hired away by private companies, organized criminals, terrorists, or simply left the field due to lack of legitimate employment. And all the while hundreds of billions in assets sit largely undefended, or defended only as well as a bunch of civilians with a hobby interest in security can do.
With no chemical reactions in play, does this mean people won't be forced to upgrade their phones simply because their battery is all but dead?
No. There are still five year old children about, and they like taking the batteries out of things, then losing them in the toilet, the cat, the microwave... Trust me, the lack of chemical reactions doesn't diminish the need for replacement parts. -_-
In THIS house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics. So you create a magnetic field, okay. Great. What's to prevent everything that's metallic in the area from moving around it, inducing current in it, and converting it into useless thermal energy? In other words -- what's preventing the battery from discharging? It might be good for a really high-capacity capacitor, but a battery? Batteries are long term.
Security is only a problem with nefarious things are intended.
Well, actually, security is about being able to trust the system to do what you want it to do. It doesn't really matter whether you lost the customer database because a hacker broke in and wiped out the server or two drives failed and the array went up in smoke from a security standpoint. This is why as security professionals we try to adhere to the principle of granting the minimal amount of access necessary to accomplish a given task; And by default not allowing access. It limits the number of possible failure points, only one of which might be J. Random Hacker.
First, windows is bad blah blah, viruses blah blah, linux and baby jesus save blah blah. Okay, now that we've eliminated 95% of the discussion ideas for this thread: user training is a freaking awesome idea! Seriously, how many of you have walked into jobs and been handed a strip of paper with your userid and password (set to 'password') and told to change it -- and that was the total extent of your training?
I couldn't help but think of drugs when I read the headline: Researchers sniffing lines of keystrokes, complaining about how thin the air has gotten since when they were young. By god, back then the electrons were so thick they had to use thick 8 gauge wiring to make anything work. Why, these days, the electrons have been used and re-used so much that we can use 24ga wiring for communications. Hey, are you gonna finish that line of qwertyuiop?
Okay, so a bunch of his underlings got arrested for a spot of corruption while he was either (a) ignorant or (b) had plausible deniability. I like this guy already. I think he's got a very good handle on what it takes to be a good IT manager. My only other question: Was the soda machine out of Mountain Dew? If so, we have a winner.
Nothing to see here, except a few people that do not understand technology and are now complaining that their expectations are not met.
You're right, there really is nothing to see here. Or rather, there's nothing left. As the article says, a large number of configuration files are opened and written to as KDE starts up. If KDE crashes and takes the OS with it (as it apparently does), those configuration files may be truncated or deleted entirely -- the commands to re-create and write them having never been sync'd to disk. As the startup of KDE takes longer than the write delay, it's entirely possible for this to seriously screw with the user.
The two problems are:
1. Bad application development. Don't delete and then re-create the same file. Use atomic operations that ensure that files you are reading/writing to/from will always be consistent. This can't be done by the Operating System, whatever the four color glossy told you.
2. Bad Operating System development. If an application kills the kernel, it's usually the kernel's fault (drivers and other code operating in priviledged space is obviously not the kernel's fault) -- and this appears to be a crash initiated from code running in user space. Bad kernel, no cookie for you.
I see you're taking after America and it's horrible system of taxation, Britain, along with the justifications for doing so. Have you considered applying for colony status with us? We're still accepting new member states. Granted, our 401k and stock options are crap right now, and there's no health coverage, but you'll make it all back with smugness, and on your first day you get a large bat and combat boots as well as a welcome gift. /grinning, ducking, running
If you're the IT guy, you'd better know the basics of compiling.
Like hell. Why should I learn how to compile, or basic programming, to apply security patches and distribute new software? Or is that not IT in your book? Look, you're asking an entire industry that runs on an Operating System that doesn't need to learn a new skill just to make something work that if they hadn't bothered to switch would be working anyway. That might be fine for you and I who actually are enthusiasts and love new technology, but for the guy who just got his degree and wants to make some money at computers without dedicating his life to them, he's not going to bother looking up gcc command syntax. He won't even load Ubuntu on a LiveCD... Because 90% of the market is Microsoft, and that's what he was taught, and that's what he knows, and that's what he's going to ask Management to keep doing. And they will, if only because that's what everybody else is doing.
If it's bespoke software, it's only smart to ask for the source code. If it's niche proprietary, well, good luck getting it to run in any case ten years later. Windows really doesn't have that great a track record of maintaining proper legacy support, although you would make it seem to be the opposite.
If it's niche proprietary, it will still run ten years later if it's made on Windows, because it does have that great track record of maintaining legacy support. That's half the reason it's so damned slow, unstable, and we bitch about it all the time -- all that legacy code! That's what Vista tried to do away with and look at what a flop that was. Every attempt Microsoft has made to do away with the original win32 API, with crap that goes back to the Windows 3.1 days, is met with derision from businesses. Large ones especially (that buy those very spendy Enterprise licensing schemes with Uber-Oh-My-God-That's-Expensive 24/7/365 support contracts). You buy Microsoft and Intel and you will still find parts and have a working system ten, maybe twenty years from now. That's an industry fact -- the support might be awful, it might be out of date, but by god it will run.
No, but if you're responsible for the purchasing and upkeep of a fleet of vehicles for your business, you'd better get a model someone can repair. Using binary blobs is like welding your car's hood shut: experts can't fix the engine, and amateurs can't even change the oil. You should think about your alternatives carefully before you bet the barn on them.
Using binary blobs is what most computers run on. Despite their shortcomings, they protect the "imaginary property" of those selling it, and they don't need programming knowledge to use--That's huge. Giving the vast majority of computer users (hell, even the majority of IT people) source code is about as productive as arranging deck chairs on the titanic. Sure, if everybody knew how and that was industry practice, wouldn't be a problem. But it's not, and so it is. Also, closed source is profitable (however imaginary and artificial the methods for doing so are) -- Businesses like making money, and they don't mind paying through the nose to other businesses so they can do the same -- all those costs are passed down to you, the consumer... Who is faced with buying products from any other business -- that does the same thing, which means the price is similiar.
Linux may have a better model, but it's not the dominant one, and until people can't make a living knowing only Microsoft, there will be a lot of people that are quite content to drive a car with the "hood welded shut". I hate Microsoft for the same reasons as everyone else, but they're in business for a reason, and you're doing your professional development and your employer a disservice to not know what that reason is.
Win95 isn't supported as of 2001. So it's equivalent to old releases of Linux in that regard.
Linux support. te-he. I don't think that even existed in 2001.
Hardware support is complicated, valgrind doesn't work (which makes debugging C apps a bit of a pain), some things like LVM and RAID are much inferior to their current state, but other than that, it's a perfectly functional system,
My car's alternator only works when it's above freezing, can only make left turns, and has one flat tire. But other than that, it's perfectly functional.
Nothing stops you from using the latest version of firefox, vim and gcc on 2.2 if you so wish. Try to install IE7 on Win95 though.
Backwards compatibility is quite a bit different than "future-proofing", which is like unicorns, santa claus, and transparent changes. They don't exist in IT. And for the record, the latest versions of firefox, vim, and gcc are compiled under a new glibc that would break horribly on those older systems with regard to binary compatibility and you know it.
At least you can coax Linux to work in unplanned situations, but good luck on getting anything modern installed on a Win95 box. The installer will probably refuse to even try.
By coaxing you mean recompiling the kernel, tweaking six different config files, and pulling your hair out for days trying to understand documentation that references C header files. Which is exactly the level of knowledge we should expect from every single person who's going to need to service that machine. That's what amazes me about the linux crowd -- sure, you can figure out a way to do whatever kludge you want, eventually. But when you need it working right now, and you don't have a guy who was born with Donald Knuth's book in his left arm and a keyboard in his right, you're kinda screwed.
You clearly don't know what the heck you are babbling on about. You were on target with the mainframe, that is reliability over the long term.
Take any linux binary compiled 10 years ago and run it today on a shipping kernel. Oh wait... you can't. Do the same under Macintosh. Oh wait... can't.
You think going back to Windows 95 is long term?
No, I think it's retarded. But there are a lot of embedded systems that run things as old as freaking DOS... still in production, still no plans to upgrade. Pray tell, why do you think that is?
And nobody had enough sense to demand the source code...
Oh, they can demand. And any business is going to say "Yeah... Right. Give up the only leverage we have on your balls? ha ha." Only they'll be more tactful about it.
You base your business on stuff you can't repair, realize the problem and don't make fixing it a goal. Then someday when it does go foom they will be shocked! shocked! and probably be lining up at the nearest public teat looking for a bailout like the banks.
I can't repair my car. Doesn't mean I don't drive one.
Linux/Unix on the other hand.... Do you realize how old UNIX is?
Somehow I don't think binaries compiled under Solaris will run under Linux. Binaries compiled for the Alpha architecture won't run under x86... and so on, and so on. I'm talking about binary compatibility, and that's what Microsoft delivers, version to version, year by year. Even Vista, the horrible failure that it was, bloated and crusty... still backwards compatible back to windows 3.1. It's disgusting, frankly... But that's what the customers ask for, that's what they get. You try running anything from thirty years ago on a recently-released "unix/linux" anything. Oh yeah: No source code. Binaries only. -_- You can rail on about technology improvements, and how this operating system does xyzzy so much better, and blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, the number one reason why Microsoft is in business is "Backwards compatibility". Your examples don't have it... Not out of the box, not without a helluva lot of work, and a lot of expertise that just doesn't exist in bulk anymore.
What are you? Another Microsoft marketing/misinformation drone? Or have you just been brainwashed?
No. I have a lot of industry experience in something other than zealotry. And most companies won't migrate away from Windows because there is something business-critical (or many somethings) that can't be easily replaced. It doesn't matter how good the alternatives are if it will cost them more money to switch than to keep it as-is. Technical merits don't matter. Pretty-shiny, doesn't matter. Hoo-ha features of goodness, don't matter. The only thing that matters is "We've used this for X years, and dammit, we're not changing." Because that's how businesses think. Not you and I, we're geeks, but we're not making decisions -- a bunch of old guys who have done it this way forever do... And so that's why Microsoft wins. Because Microsoft doesn't change quickly.
End of discussion.